100 Gigabit: The Coming Metro Opportunity
Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 10:34AM
Gazettabyte has published a Position Paper on the coming 100 Gigabit metro opportunity. (Click here to download a copy.) There has been several announcements in recent weeks from system and component vendors addressing 100 Gigabit metro networks.
The 19-page report looks at the status of the 100 Gigabit market, the drivers for 100 Gigabit deployment, the technology options and their merits. The paper then states how 100 Gigabit technologies such as direct-detection point-to-point, direct-detection WDM and coherent will fare in the metro.
Gazettabyte interviewed over 20 operators, system vendors, optical module and component makers for the Position Paper.
These include ADVA Optical Networks, Alcatel-Lucent, Brocade, BT, BTI Systems, Ciena, Cisco Systems, Cyoptics, John D'Ambrosia - chair of IEEE 100 Gig backplane study group, ECI Telecom, Ericsson, Finisar, Huawei, Infinera, Ixia, Juniper Networks, MultiPhy, Nokia Siemens Networks, Oclaro, Opnext, Level 3 Communications, Transmode, Verizon and ZTE.
Look forward to any comments you may have regarding the report, its position and conclusions.
Reader Comments (3)
Very nice paper! What is not so clear is how the metro coherent solutions differ from their long-haul counterparts, i.e. what actually makes them cheaper.
Ariel, I did put this very question during the interviews but companies were not too forthcoming.
At present there is little difference between the two simply because volumes are still small.
But what was suggested was that there is scope to use cheaper optics, compensating using the DSP ASIC.
Also because the distances in metro are shorter, simpler filtering schemes can be used for the compensation. This could save power but it would still need to use the same ASIC.
So perhaps metro coherent will never be that much cheaper than long-haul, except that the more it is used in the metro, the larger the coherent volumes overall.
Thanks for the question, and I'm glad you like the report.
Responding to your Tweet for comments, but most of what occurred to me you've already suggested. The only thing I might add is that the shorter distances might relax the FEC requirements as well.